


Going with the Flow

by Emony



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter - Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:21:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emony/pseuds/Emony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in the new council.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going with the Flow

**Author's Note:**

> twistedshorts challenge #1.  
> First posted 25 April 2005

Oxford English Dictionary Online – Chamber – I.b – The reception room in a palace; called the presence-, or audience chamber.

***

A girl could get a big head in a place like this, and as some people will happily tell you, mine doesn't need to get bigger. Giles and Willow, with a little help from Wesley, finally got a hold of the old council's money and other stuff; other stuff including the home of the new council, this place.

It's a castle, and honest to God castle. Apparently it was the Travers family summer residence. Summer residence? Shows how much money the bastards had, a summer residence that's a castle and a huge townhouse in London for the rest of the year round, which is now our London office. I'm sure Quentin would just love what we've done with his bastions of uptight Englishness!

Anyway, back to this place, Rounton Castle, huge and lots of land too, plenty of space to train in without nosy neighbours. And the old rule of Dawn never having a horse flew out the window on day one. There's an entire wing for the baby slayers, and another for us Scoobs, with Giles as far away from the noise as possible. The library is enormous, about four times the size of the old Sunnydale High library and every single book is on vampires, demons or other nasties; the times we could have done with it back home. We use the old banquet hall as a dining room, so no stately five course meals here, just lots of slayers, scoobs, and new watchers fighting over the last chicken wing.

I love it here; my rooms are about the size of the top floor or our old house. The whole castle is light and airy with big windows, just what I need to remind me that we are not always surrounded in darkness, and my rooms are no exception. I even get my own bathroom, no more waiting in line. You should see the size of the bath; if we didn't have a swimming pool on the grounds I'd use my bath. Actually, we all have our own bathrooms, even the slayers share bathrooms between two.

Yeah, so we still fight every night and there have already been a few apocalypses across the world to deal with, but it's all so much easier now; we have the slayers pitching in with the research and our new watchers not just watching.

What is at times, a downside of all this is that we're bigger, more noticeable, so we get to deal with the bureaucracy too. This leads me to my favourite room in the whole castle, the audience-chamber.

Quentin was such an uptight jerk, 'the audience-chamber'. Apparently it wasn't Quentin that called it that, there's some historical significance in there too, but I tuned out when Giles hit lecture mode.

The audience-chamber has high roofs, stonewalls, like the rest of the castle, pillars forming two columns from one end of the room to the other. Pale cotton drapes hang in the arched windows that reach almost from floor to roof and line two sides of the chamber. In the centre of the room is a large oak table, usually covered in laptops, phones and other crap we need. On the far wall opposite the door is a large screen we use for video conferencing, showing training videos or for movie night when we pull in all the sofas that are under every other window.

What I like about the room is that even though it's full of clutter, has lots of furniture and noise; it can still be the most peaceful room in the castle. It's also the room in which I can lots of fun in, and exercise my 'General Buffy' persona, in dealing with the idiots that think we're just young upstarts that know nothing, sort of like the next people we have to see.

Giles, Willow, Faith, Xander and I are sitting at the table facing the door, laptops and notebooks to the ready, whilst Dawn is opening the door to let our 'esteemed' guests in.

She shows them to their seats, we all shake hands, say hello or whatever and then sit, including Dawn, which brings a few raised eyebrows from our guests.

"Miss Summers?"

"Which one?" Dawn asks, the smirk she learnt from Spike and Faith fully in place.

"The older." The bat-man snarls back.

"Yes." I turn to the man who spoke first, 'Professor' Dumbledore, with a 'nice' smile plastered across my face.

"Miss Summers are you sure that your young charge should be here for this meeting?"

"Mr Dumbledore-"

"Professor." Snarly man mutters under his breath, forgetting, or choosing to ignore slayer hearing.

"-My young charge is my sister, as you well know. Dawn is old enough to make her own decisions; at 17 I had already prevented several apocalypses. Dawn has as much of a right to be in this meeting as anyone else."

"Very well, Miss Summers."

"Were Mr Potter and his friends unable to make this meeting?" Good one Giles.

"They were not, the children send their apologies."

They probably didn't even know about the meeting. These people need to realise that those 'children' have been through far more than most of them and shouldn't be kept out of this sort of thing… it only makes them go looking for answers and gets them into more trouble. Or they walk in on a discussion about when they're supposed to die…

"Now, to the purpose of the meeting: you wish to learn more of our capabilities before you *allow* us to join your fight, yes?" You know fine well they came to us first, Giles.

"Yes we do Mr Giles." Dumbledore seems prepared for an entire speech here, "Although you appear most competent, we are unaware as to how you would cope against such a foe as Lord Voldemort." Such a foe?

"Ah yes, well, Willow, if you would?"

"Sure Giles." She reaches for a button under the table and the big screen flickers to life. "If you would look towards the screen behind me you will see a comprehensive report of all the 'hostiles' we faced whilst still in Sunnydale, this does not include any of our 'battles' since 'The Fall'. The information is also on the first page of the packs in front of you-"

"Miss Rosenberg we have seen these figures before." Snarly pants is at it again.

"I know you have, I'm just reviewing what you already know, I'm also aware that you think we use brute force and don't think our options through. You have one 'big bad' to focus on and one prophecy to deal with, both of which we, as a group, have faced countless times."

"The prophecy says-"

"I know what the prophecy says Mr Dumbledore, I also know that a prophecy proclaimed my death almost a decade ago and I'm still here. Prophecies are not infallible, they do not tell you everything you need to know. They are a guide."

Yep, these meetings are always fun, you should have heard the one we had with that Bond guy the other week, he tried it on with almost every female in the building… but at least it was more fun than this one. They come to us first, then they try to tell us what to do, then they don't believe we can do what they came to us for in the first place… there are days when I hate this sort of thing, today is not one of them. Today is one of those days when I'm going to go with the flow and the smirks across the faces of my friends show exactly where that flow is headed.


End file.
